Sunday 19 October

...it's the busiest time of the meet for us, please be patient with the team photos, it will take a couple of days to get them all posted. Please be sure to report typos and miscues to the webmaster. Thank you! We have all three panels of judges working as 4-way Intermediate jumps this morning. How many Otters we got going here?

...looks like we got three Otters going, with one or two more on call if needed...a tip to any of you trying to get that pesky webcam working: download the latest Flash player from Macromedia.com. Even if you already have the Flash player installed and working, it seems that downloading the latest version can kick start the webcam. Yes, I've already tried the Java and script versions, they stink even worse...

..."The Cunning Stunts", formerly known as "Snatch Force," need to work on their, uhm, video angle...okay okay, I'll be nice...how about those Marlins? ;-)...

1000
We're going like gangbusters over here, tidbits will be slow for a while...please, if you send any corrections for team pages, include the team # for me please, thank you...just watched the Big Three: GK, Majik, and Airspeed, they all rocked on round 1 and Airspeed has a one point lead...wow, this is going to be a fun couple of days of 4-way...

...I just walked through the hangar to recycle my coffee and the place is just swarming with competitors...dirt diving, creeping, watching DZTV, packing, gearing up, dirt diving, creeping...it's full competition mode out there, and I got the best seat in the house! Makes it kind of hard to mingle though, I need to get out there and get the dirt for you guys, if you know what I mean...Airspeed Vertical sure looks good for so little training this year...I can't believe how tight that race is in Advanced after just the first round! 13th place is just 4 points out of the lead!

...here come some photomagrafs in a few...

...we're motoring on in to round 2 now, just watched Majik's jump, it was a steady 19 points on a jump that's hard to motor fast on...

1300
Hello? Is there anyone out there? I mean, besides all the Viagra spammers? It must be Sunday 'cause that inbox is awful quiet otherwise. Well, those of you out there, please be sure to visit our sponsors please pretty please? Tell them how much you love us and please keep on sponsoring us so we can keep this cool project going please pretty please? Thanks!

Round 3 notes...GK Gold had a good jump after a rough exit, for a 19. Airspeed had a nice exit but busted down to a 17 when they missed grip building a monopod...haven't seen Majik come up yet...absolutely wonderful competition vibes here this year, people seem to be taking competition very seriously but having a lot of fun doing so...if enough people bleg (online begging) I'm going to post some steaming videos of some jumps...er, streaming videos...okay, Majik is up now for round 3, it looks good if they didn't get popped on that crank...let's see...a 19 if clean, a 17 if not...yes indeed, they did get busted on that crank, and after 3 rounds, Golden Knights Gold has leap-frogged into first place...

...BTW, although Ted's software is just about perfect in every respect, there appears to be a tiny buggaboo that sometimes causes the results pages to upload a blank page. If you click on a results link and get a blank page, don't worry, just wait for the scoring processor to load the next page and it will be fixed. If you still get a blank page after say a full hour, then please send us a note...

Some of the superb staff Betty has working here for the 2003 Nationals. The teamwork around here is outstanding, in the air and on the ground.
Below: Ted's foreign slave-labor builds his OmniSkore judging panels somewhere in Chandler, AZ. Hi Brent!

Okay then, I got a few requests for steamy video, look for that to be posted along with the 4-way Intermediate draw later tonight.

Round 4 notes - Airspeed Vertical really smoked their jump for a 34, while GK Gold and Majik both had some minor glitches and posted 32s, so Vertical takes the lead after 4 rounds. Wow, this is going to be one awesome fight for the gold medal here.

1630
They are jumping  and judging so fast it's very hard to keep up with it all! It's only 4:30 and we're judging round 5. No controversies that I've heard of, things are going smoother than an Exlax convention. My only complaint is the lack of a big screen for DZTV (they have a number of small ones scattered about) but they've been working on it. They have a nice little enclosed theater in the hangar with about 25 seats but no DZTV in it. Sniff sniff...

...a half hour later, manifest has just announced that 4-way will stop after 6 rounds today, they had been considering 7 rounds...

...I'd like to be able to cover the Advanced and Intermediate events a little closer, but there's just too much to do with DZTV...anybody out there who wants to contribute here, just throw it my way! But with this being another "on" year (U.S. Team selection) most eyes are going to be on those Open events...will Majik finally their chance for the big dance?

...okay now, on to round 5, where GK Gold and Majik have already posted solid 23s...now Airspeed Vertical, they have flat video on the exit, let's see how they call this one...could be yet another lead change here...they have 23 scoring formations in time, OUCH the 2nd formation is a J, the 3rd a 0, and the 17th a 0, and that collates to a score of 18, GK Gold will take back the lead. Wow!

1810 - T1 chews off a 'Bit
I had one interesting question in the hangar this afternoon: Is the all-random skydive in the [intermediate] competition draw truly random, or was it concocted by a clever hook in the software? The answer is, of course, that the random draw generator operates on a purely random basis. However, there is a much greater statistical chance of this occurring with Intermediate than there is with Open/Advanced.

Here's why. The Intermediate dive pool consists of the standard (Open/Advanced) pool, with six blocks removed. Even though the page size is 4 or 5 points, instead of 5 or 6, when an 11-jump draw is generated, and enough of the jumps come out to 5 point pages instead of 4, the pool of formations being drawn from is exhausted before round 11 is "completed". (This is, of course, a bit of a hole in the rules.) At this meet, we had to attempt an Intermediate draw generation a half dozen times before we got a complete, valid 11 rounds. And such a draw will, of course, be dominated by 4-point pages. Between that, and the fact that the pool has 16 randoms and 16 blocks, there is much greater statistical chance that one of those 4-point pages will be all randoms, as opposed to an all-random 5-point page in the Open category. Clear as mud?

1900 (T2)
Patience, grasshoppers, the steaming 4-way videos will be coming later. The webmaster must wait for judging to finish before he can turn the webcam off and use the hardware for capturing the footage, and then there is editing to do and wine to drink and much knobbing with hobs, I will get there my friends...

...interesting question from the gallery:

At a nationals meet where there is tunnel located nearby is it commonplace for teams to fly the draw? Just wondering if it is considered the same as creeping or if it's frowned upon or would a team be stupid not to fly the draw in the tunnel before the meet?

I imagine that it's against the rules, and if not, it should be. It's not like creeping at all, you actually get to build the muscle memory and see if the engineering works in freefall. If a team were to try the tunnel during the meet, I can't image they'd get away with it. Anyone's thoughts out there? Send them HERE.

...okay, on with round 6...Majik up first, a very nice clean 20...Airspeed Vertical now...also very sweet, a bit of a stumble near the end, a 19...now the Knights Gold, wearing their world meet RWB, a fast start, looking good, wow a very sweet 21! Will it stay...yes, a spotless 21 points! That was one nice skydive, and GK Gold will go to bed tonight with the lead after six rounds. Tomorrow will be interesting, to say the least.

Last year, there were those who thought the Knights a bit lucky to win -- perhaps me among them -- but it is the Knights today showing that they are no fluke. Do they have a training edge this year? One wonders. I've no idea how much Majik has been training, and I know Airspeed has not put in many jumps. Perhaps someone in the know can fill us in? Just curious...

...one feedback on the tunnel question:

I totally agree with you about the wind tunnel. That would be like jumping the round over and over until you got it down. That would be the same as handing out the draw a 6 months before the meet.

Well, maybe not, but yeah, you could bang out some serious practice in just five minutes...

2000
Six rounds of 4-way in the can, I'm turning off the webcam and making some steaming videos. I'll have the links posted on the home page as soon as they are done.

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Ted "T1" Wagner, Chief Engineer | Tim "T2" Wagner, Webmaster